The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

11.62 William Whewell 1794-1866

Hence no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into an horizontal line which is accurately straight: there will always be a bending downwards.

‘Elementary Treatise on Mechanics’ (1819) ch. 4, problem 2. Often cited as an example of accidental metre and rhyme, and changed in later editions.

11.63 James Mcneill Whistler 1834-1903

I am not arguing with you—I am telling you.

‘The Gentle Art of Making Enemies’ (1890)

Art is upon the Town!

‘Ten O’Clock’ (1885)

Listen! There never was an artistic period. There never was an Art-loving nation.

‘Ten O’Clock’ (1885)

Nature is usually wrong.

‘Ten O’Clock’ (1885)

‘I only know of two painters in the world,’ said a newly introduced feminine enthusiast to Whistler, ‘yourself and Velasquez.’ ‘Why,’ answered Whistler in dulcet tones, ‘why drag in Velasquez?’

In D. C. Seitz ‘Whistler Stories’ (1913) p. 27

[In answer to a lady who said that a landscape reminded her of his work] Yes madam, Nature is creeping up.

In D. C. Seitz ‘Whistler Stories’ (1913) p. 9

[In answer to the question ‘For two days’ labour, you ask two hundred guineas?’] No, I ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime.

In D. C. Seitz ‘Whistler Stories’ (1913) p. 40

You shouldn’t say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you’re perfectly safe.

In D. C. Seitz ‘Whistler Stories’ (1913) p. 35

[Answering Oscar Wilde’s ‘I wish I had said that’] You will, Oscar, you will.

L.C. Ingleby ‘Oscar Wilde’ p. 67

11.64E. B. White 1899-1985

Commuter—one who spends his life In riding to and from his wife;

A man who shaves and takes a train, And then rides back to shave again.

‘The Commuter’

Mother: It’s broccoli, dear.

Child: I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.

‘New Yorker’ 8 December 1928 (cartoon caption)

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

‘New Yorker’ 3 July 1944

11.65 T. H. White 1906-64

The Victorians had not been anxious to go away for the weekend. The Edwardians, on the contrary, were nomadic.

‘Farewell Victoria’ (1933) pt. 4

The once and future king.

Title of novel (1958), translating Sir Thomas Malory Le Morte d’Arthur bk. 21, ch. 7 ‘Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus’

11.66 Alfred North Whitehead 1861-1947

Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.

‘Adventures of Ideas’ (1933) pt. 1, ch. 5

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest, and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.

‘Adventures of Ideas’ (1933) pt. 4, ch. 16

There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.

‘Dialogues’ (1954) prologue

Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.

‘Dialogues’ (1954) 15 December 1939

What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.

‘Dialogues’ (1954) 30 August 1941

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

‘Dialogues’ (1954) 10 June 1943

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

‘Introduction to Mathematics’ (1911) ch. 5

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

‘Process and Reality’ (1929) pt. 2, ch. 1

11.67 Bertrand Whitehead

Drinka Pinta Milka Day.

Slogan for the British Milk Marketing Board, 1958

11.68 Katharine Whitehorn 1926—

I wouldn’t say when you’ve seen one Western you’ve seen the lot; but when you’ve seen the lot you get the feeling you’ve seen one.

‘Decoding the West’ in ‘Sunday Best’ (1976)

Hats divide generally into three classes: offensive hats, defensive hats, and shrapnel.

‘Hats’ in ‘Shouts and Murmurs’ (1963) No nice men are good at getting taxis. In ‘Observer’ 1977

11.69 George Whiting

My blue heaven.

Title of song (1927)

When you’re all dressed up and have no place to go.

Title of song (1912)

11.70 William Whiting 1825-78

O hear us when we cry to Thee For those in peril on the sea.

‘Eternal Father Strong to Save’

11.71 Gough Whitlam 1916—

Well may he say ‘God Save the Queen’. But after this nothing will save the GovernorGeneral....Maintain your rage and your enthusiasm through the campaign for the election now to be held and until polling day.

Speech in Canberra, 11 November 1975, in ‘The Times’ 12 November 1975

11.72 Walt Whitman 1819-92

Silent and amazed even when a little boy,

I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday put God in his statements, As contending against some being or influence.

‘A Child’s Amaze’

Full of life now, compact, visible,

I, forty year old the eighty-third year of the States,

To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence, To you yet unborn these, seeking you.

‘Full of life now’

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling!

‘Give me the splendid silent sun’

I dreamed in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth,

I dreamed that was the new city of Friends.

‘I dreamed in a dream’

The institution of the dear love of comrades.

‘I hear it was charged against me’

Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature.

‘Me imperturbe’

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting.

‘O Captain! My Captain!’

The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done. From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

‘O Captain! My Captain!’

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,

Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle...

A reminiscence sing.

‘Out of the cradle endlessly rocking’

Come my tan-faced children,

Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,

Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers!

‘Pioneers! O Pioneers!’

Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,

That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soiled world;

For my enemy is dead, a man as divine as myself is dead,

I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin—I draw near, Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

‘Reconciliation’

What do you see Walt Whitman?

Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you?

‘Salut au monde’

Camerado, this is no book, Who touches this touches a man,

(Is it night? Are we here together alone?) It is I you hold and who holds you.

I spring from the pages into your arms—decease calls me forth.

‘So Long!’

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.

‘Song of Myself’ (1855) st. 1

Urge and urge and urge,

Always the procreant urge of the world.

‘Song of Myself’ (1855) st. 3

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to one with full hands

How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of the hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,

A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,

Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?...

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

‘Song of Myself’ (1855) st. 6

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?

I hasten to inform him or her, it is just as lucky to die and I know it.

‘Song of Myself’ (1855) st. 7

I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

‘Song of Myself’ (1855) st. 18

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,

And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the highest,

And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven.

‘Song of Myself’ (1855) st. 31

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained, I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

‘Song of Myself’ (1855) st. 32

Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give I give myself.

‘Song of Myself’ (1855) st. 39

My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain,

The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms,

The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there.

‘Song of Myself’ (1855) st. 45

I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,

And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is.

‘Song of Myself’ (1855) st. 48

In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,

I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is signed by God’s name, And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,

Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

‘Song of Myself’ (1855) st. 48

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

‘Song of Myself’ (1855) st. 51

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

‘Song of Myself’ (1855) st. 52

Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of elected persons.

‘Song of the Broad Axe’ 5, l. 12

Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the men, Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men; Where the city of the faithfullest friends stands,

Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands, Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands, Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands, There the great city stands.

‘Song of the Broad Axe’ 5, l. 20

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

‘Song of the Open Road’ 1, l. 1

The earth, that is sufficient,

I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are,

I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

‘Song of the Open Road’ 1, l. 8

I will put in my poems that with you is heroism upon land and sea, And I will report all heroism from an American point of view.

‘Starting from Paumanok’

This dust was once the man,

Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand, Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age,

Was saved the Union of these States.

‘This dust was once the man’

The earth does not argue,

Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,

Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise, Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures, Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out.

‘To the sayers of words’ 2

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed,

And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night, I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed’ st. 1

Come lovely and soothing death,

Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each,

Sooner or later, delicate death. Praised be the fathomless universe,

For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise! For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.

‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed’ st. 14

These United States.

‘A Backward Glance O’er Travell’d Roads’ (1888) (‘These States’ is passim in Whitman’s verse)

11.73 John Greenleaf Whittier 1807-92

Up from the meadows rich with corn, Clear in the cool September morn, The clustered spires of Frederick stand Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

‘Barbara Frietchie’ l. 1

Up the street came the rebel tread, Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.

‘Barbara Frietchie’ l. 23

‘Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country’s flag,’ she said. A shade of sadness, a blush of shame, Over the face of the leader came.

‘Barbara Frietchie’ l. 35

‘Who touches a hair of yon gray head Dies like a dog! March on!’ he said.

For he’ll grow into a hound, so we’ll pass the bottle round, And merrily we’ll whoop and we’ll holloa.

‘Drink, Puppy, Drink’ chorus

11.80 Anna Wickham (Edith Alice Mary Harper) 1884-1947

It is well within the order of things

That man should listen when his mate sings; But the true male never yet walked

Who liked to listen when his mate talked.

‘The Affinity’

11.81 Bishop Samuel Wilberforce 1805-73

If I were a cassowary

On the plains of Timbuctoo, I would eat a missionary,

Cassock, band, and hymn-book too.

Impromptu verse, ascribed also to W.M. Thackeray

11.82 Richard Wilbur 1921—

We milk the cow of the world, and as we do We whisper in her ear, ‘You are not true.’

‘Epistemology’

11.83 Ella Wheeler Wilcox 1855-1919

Laugh and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone;

For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth, But has trouble enough of its own.

‘Solitude’

So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind

Is all the sad world needs.

‘The World’s Need’

11.84 Oscar Wilde 1854-1900

He did not wear his scarlet coat, For blood and wine are red,

And blood and wine were on his hands When they found him with the dead.

‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ (1898) pt. 1, st. 1